The ugly reality of violence against women

In Victoria alone, police respond to incidents of violence against women almost every 10 minutes. But ultimately this isn't a police problem, says Chief Commissioner Ken Lay. It's ours.

Violence against women is an issue which is often discussed in terms of statistics, so that the magnitude of the problem is communicated.

But I want to tell you a bit about the reality and the ugliness that police see.

A couple are in a short-term relationship (not that unusual these days). They break up. The man accuses the woman of stealing his mobile phone. He then punches her in the face, kicks her violently, rapes her, stomps on her head - partially crushing her skull. He keeps beating her for more than six hours. He then walks away, leaving her for dead.

Amazingly, she survives, but with a partially crushed skull - she now has a plate in her head and has permanently lost sight in one eye.

Another couple, with four children, break up after 11 years. The man wants to come into the house - the woman doesn't let him, but he breaks a window and goes in anyway.

He then rapes her on the bed with the threat of harming their four children. He uses an electrical cord to beat her and breaks her hand, bruises her lower back, and leaves cuts over the top half of her body. He threatens to kill her, tells her he will make her look like the monster she really is, cuts chunks of her hair, and continues to physically assault her for the next 36 hours.

Their four children are at home the whole time and see the whole thing.

Then there is the little girl whose stepfather started sexually abusing her when she was 7 and a half years old. She grows up thinking it's normal for a little girl to help her dad "squirt".

The "relationship" progressed to become fully sexual as she grew up.

Then there is this case which came to us earlier this week. A woman is six months pregnant and her partner punches her, throws a bicycle at her head, squeezes her stomach, jumps on her, and hits her 8-year-old child.

She was brought to this hospital with broken ribs, serious bruising, and with serious danger to the unborn child.

This victim here did not report the crime - her friend did.

There is a lot of attention around the high-profile cases - the heinous murder of Jill Meagher and the grizzly and horrible murder this week of Sarah Cafferkey.

But the reality is not just about these awful and horrible cases, but in the grinding violence which happens day in, day out, in every part of our city and state. Sadly, the vast majority of violence against women still happens in the home, and is committed by a husband, partner or boyfriend.

Let me describe a day for my officers:

6am

We are called to a house where a man has beaten his girlfriend up by punching her to the stomach. Both were drinking all night and he is extremely violent and unpredictable when we get there.

10.30am

We go to an incident where a man had gone to his ex-girlfriend's house and grabbed her and tried to carry her to his car.

She escapes and runs into her bedroom where he follows her and then blocks her in.

A friend comes to help her out and the ex-boyfriend punches this guy in the neck and chin.

The woman escapes as her ex-boyfriend threatens to kill her.

1pm

We respond to a neighbour's call to police because of screams of distress in the house next door.

We arrive to find a couple arguing and the husband having thrown furniture and plates around the house and towards the victim.

A small child was there, saw the whole thing, and was crying and distressed.

3pm

We go to a house and find a man who was previously arrested for breaching his intervention order and bail conditions. He was breaching those conditions again.

8pm

We find a man who was wanted for assaulting his girlfriend. When we try to arrest him at his mother's house, he assaults both our police officers and we find he had also hit his mother.

11pm

We go to a house where a 14-year-old girl has held a knife to her mother's throat as she was not happy about her mother's treatment of her.

4am

We respond to a neighbour's call about hearing screaming and glass breaking. We send two divvy vans.

When we get there, we hear the glass smashing and a woman screaming. We find a large pool of blood and broken glass everywhere. We find a woman lying on a bed with a cut on her arm.

We try to arrest the man, who starts assaulting us. It takes us five minutes until we are able to handcuff him and take him to St Kilda Road.

Victoria Police responds to close to 140 incidents, such as the ones I have described, every day. In every suburb of Melbourne. From Doveton to Toorak; from Hawthorn to Epping.

That's close to one every 10 minutes. And these are the ones we know about.

As I said before, we often talk about this issue in terms of numbers and statistics so we can better understand the magnitude of the problem.

But I sometimes think this takes us away from the reality of seeing women with broken eye sockets, missing teeth, broken arms, and broken spirits.

It also takes us away from the reality of the effect this has on our children - the ones who live in fear of violence occurring everyday. Who tiptoe around the house - just in case. Who don't argue with or answer back to their parents like normal children - just in case. Who grow up thinking it is OK to assault women. Or to be assaulted.

We have made changes at Victoria Police to deal with this. We have improved our processes. We train our recruits differently. We run programs to help deal with the issue. We work better with other parts of government.

And while we're not perfect, we are genuinely trying bloody hard to be better. But in the end, police are not the problem.

The problem is every one of us who laughs at that revolting joke which severely degrades women - knowing we shouldn't. It is those of us who verbally abuse and physically intimidate women in the way those young French women were abused on a Melbourne suburban bus a couple of weeks ago. It is every one of us who doesn't say something when we start to suspect something isn't right with our friends.

We create the environment in which these people - who are 95 per cent men - think it is OK to do what they do.

Violence against women is not OK; it is not acceptable. It is a major issue for every police agency across Australia and internationally. It is also not just a policing problem: violence against women is a public health problem; it is an education problem. Police cannot stop family violence on our own.

It is the responsibility of every man to stop it. So ask yourself: what can you do to stop this?

This is an edited version of a speech made by Ken Lay at the Royal Women's Hospital White Ribbon Day breakfast on November 23.

Ken Lay is the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police. View his full profile here.

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